Be Careful What You Wish for
by kellineil
Summary: What if one horcrux had survived but Voldemort was prevented from returning?


**Be Careful What You Wish For**

Darkness

Complete darkness

Darkness so complete that for the inhabitants of the distant past it would be unimaginable.

And yet, something of that time still existed, protected from the ravages of time by the foul magics cast upon it. It was circular in shape, not that any entity still existed that understood that concept. The arrangement of atoms within would have been understood to be gold by those long dead inhabitants of the past. Not that anyone existed who would understand what the word 'gold' meant anymore. Nor for that matter did anything exist that would understand the word 'atom', or indeed 'word'.

Close by a shapeless cloud of little more than energy floated. Close by in the terms of the universe anyway. It was within a few million kilometres of the artefact. The cloud had an awareness of sorts, although it was somewhat limited these days. Yet it still retained it's memories and an awareness of it's present, past and future.

Memories

Memories flashed through it's, for lack of a better word, mind.

A battle was being fought. In the background a castle burned as flashes of light lit the darkness showing where spells were being cast. A Dark Lord's followers were slowly beating back the defenders of the castle. And yet, they were losing. The defenders were buying time for reinforcements to arrive and for their champion to complete his task. Potter. That was his name. How the entity hated that name. Their final confrontation came. He should have won, but he had failed to take into account the boy's conquest of the wand. Potter had won, destroying yet another body of his, but his plan had worked! An anchor yet existed and he had survived. He had the chance to return once more. The memory faded...

Another one.

This one was surely only a short time later. It was faded, as if the entity had not been fully connected to the world. It watched as his victorious enemy examined his last anchor. He expected them to destroy it, finally ending his existence. And yet they didn't. He couldn't make out what they were saying. He was still disorientated from the destruction of his body. All he could make out was that the enemy wished to punish him by granting his greatest wish. It made no sense.

Yet again a memory faded into view.

His anchor had been placed on top of a great column. It was some sort of muggle invention, he neither knew, nor cared what. Suddenly an enormous amount of fire and smoke billowed out of the end closest to the ground. Slowly, the column began to rise and take his anchor with it. At first he didn't feel anything, but as the anchor moved further away the entity felt itself being dragged along in it's wake. Slowly he was dragged from the planet on which he'd always lived. Slowly he was dragged towards the system's star. Months passed, then years (what were these things? 'Months' and 'years'?) Eventually the column crashed into the star, dragging the entity with it. Yet again the memory faded...

Time passed. It made no difference. Slowly another memory asserted itself

The entity had finally managed to make it's way back to it's home planet, Earth, that was it's name. It did not know how long it had taken, time for it was by now a nebulous thing. It was weak, so weak this far from it's anchor which now resided in the very centre of it's prison in the star. The entity had worked so hard to find a way to return to it's home. Now it had succeeded. It was time to seek out it's followers and plot it's return to power and revenge upon the Potter boy. The entity headed to where it remembered the home of a family of supporters was. Malfoy. That was their name. As it passed the boundaries of the property it first had inkling that something was wrong. The wards that protected their home were strong! Almost as strong as the school where the battle had been fought. But these were weak, decayed, as if it was a long time since they had been maintained. Slowly the entity approached the home. It was derelict, overgrown, as if countless years had passed since anyone had lived here. There were no supporters here. In frustration the entity left and sought out the homes of other supporters. Most were in a similar condition. Some few were still inhabited but even in those cases the supporters the entity remembered were nowhere to be found.

In desperation the entity travelled to the castle in which the school was located. Yet again it was shocked by the state of the wards as it approached it's destination. They were virtually non-existent! Still, it entered the school, expecting to find it busy with students. Instead it was virtually empty. At first the entity thought it had arrived during a holiday. But then it noticed that one classroom was busy, one was full. Drifting into the room it was careful to avoid notice. There were 20 students in the classroom of all ages and houses. Apparently this was the entire student body! What had happened to magical world from which the entity had come? No answers were to be gained in this room.

Over the coming months the entity would drift through the school, searching for the answers it needed. Slowly a picture formed. More time had passed than the entity had realised since that battle. It had taken place over 500 years previously. In the time since the magical world had slowly waned and decayed. Increasingly those magical born in the muggle world had chosen to remain there, drawn by the wonders of science and technology the muggles were achieving. And so, as the muggles had reached to the stars, the magical had slowly waned. Without the regular input of fresh blood, the magical families had slowly succumbed to inbreeding. Now, over 200 years since the last muggleborn magical had graduated from the school, most magical families struggled to have even one child. Worse, the muggle world had known of the magical for many centuries. The offered help but the magical in their assumed superiority had rejected it. Now it was too late. The last magical had no choice left but to merge and disappear into the muggle world. The only other choice was extinction. In a rage, the entity banished this memory from it's mind

The next memory that asserted it's presence was even worse

The entity had drifted for many years. Unable to find any supporters, or even anyone aware of it's existence, it had watched the end of the magical world and the slow loss of knowledge of it's unique culture. Eventually it remembered how it's name, once so feared that most would not even say it out loud slowly became nothing more that a historical curiosity, then a legend, then myth, then not even that.

The memory merged into another

Years passed and the entity watched as the distinction between muggle and magical ceased to exist. Slowly, even human begun to mean something different to what the entity understood. As humanity spread to the stars and became something else, something new, the entity railed against it's fate. It was only now, as the entity watched the galaxy burn with lights created by humanities successors that it realised that no one now existed who could return it to life. It was a terrible realisation. The memory faded

The memories now asserting themselves were now fleeting. Time passed increasingly quickly. Civilisations rose and fell. Humanity changed to become something other as new species that called themselves human were born. The entity truly understood nothing of this era. It had been dipping into and out of it's memories and these were confusing. Eventually another one came to the fore.

An era of war. Humanity still existed, although not in any form that the entity truly recognised. It was an era of decay, as the muggles fell from the heights they had once achieved. The entity remembered them slowly forgetting how their vaunted technology operated. How they fell into the worshipping of dark Gods. Wars on untold scales swept the galaxy and humanity finally began to fail. Magicals once more rose to the fore, but this time they were simply part of the destruction that fell upon the galaxy. Finally, a truly alien species descended upon the remnants of humanities greatness and devoured all in it's path. It was the end for the descendents of those inquisitive apes. But some life did survive.

An asteroid was heading towards the Earth. In times past people had existed who could have stopped it. Now, they had all left their cradle. The entity had at first struggled to recognise the planet of it's birth. Now one vast continent existed. Mountains, seas, rivers and lakes which had not existed when the entity had a true life now dominated the planet. Those that it remembered no longer existed. It was no longer the entity's home. It drifted away.

Again the entity returned to it's former home. The world was now devoid of water, uninhabitable. Life itself was dying on the planet, although it survived elsewhere in the solar system. The hosts star had expanded dramatically. It's outer surface had already swallowed the inner two planets of the system and now threatened the third. It's life was coming to an end, and when it did the soul anchor would finally be free of it's prison.

And another...

The entity was free! It's soul anchor had finally been ejected from the star as it had thrown off it's own outer layers in it's death throws. The soul anchor now drifted through space, away from the slowly cooling remnant of it's former prison. The entity was now free to travel much further afield than it had previously, however slowly. It would take eons, but eons it had...

Another flash

The entity hadn't noticed at first, but it eventually it had become obvious. Initially it had noticed the constellations change. Now however the universe was starting to appear darker, as if there were fewer stars. Slowly, star after star was winking out of existence and not being replaced...

Flash

The universe was largely dark now. The entity would on occasion drift past a dimly glowing ember of the a former star but that was happening less frequently now. There were so few stars left, and even those that existed had little heat...

Flash

The entity remembered it vividly. The death of the last true star. It had been dim, but by this point there was so little light that it had been visible. With that death, the era of light was over. The entity by now had little concept of sanity, if it ever had been sane. Still, life existed in the darkness, harvesting energy from the corpses of plentiful dead stars.

Flash

Planets. There had been planets in the past. And life. Now all those had gone. Evaporated. Even solid matter will evaporate given enough time. Even protons will evaporate given enough time. And they were. The only exception seemed to be the soul anchor

Flash

All that existed now were the corpses of dead stars. No life, no light, no matter. Even the corpses were evaporating now. The entity drifted, desperate for something new to experience

Flash

Darkness. Total darkness. There was nothing left, not even those stellar corpses. All that remained was the ring of metal. Nothing now existed that could destroy that. The entity screamed in horror at what had happened to it, unable to affect anything it now was coming to realise the stupidity of it's quest. It would live forever. _Forever._ And yet, there was nothing left to experience. No pain or joy, no victory or defeat, no power, no hate, no dominance. Nothing new. There would never by anything new. And yet the entity was still in the early period of it's life. It would always be in the early period of it's life. For when time is endless, you are only ever at the beginning of time. _Forever._

And finally, the entity that was born Tom Marvolo Riddle and once feared as Lord Voldemort now realised the truth that many before him had known instinctively.

 _Be careful what you wish for..._


End file.
